Pointed
by crazywriter10
Summary: There's a reason Clint's never had stitches. Until now. Clint/Coulson, Implied Tony/Steve


First of all, a big thank you has to go out to Red Tigress, Victoria LeRoux, and everybody over at Beta Branch for all the encouragement. It's a great group over there. A big, big thank you to those lovely ladies.

This story contains **mention of/an explicit relationship between Clint and Coulson (so, slash)** - and if that's not your cup of tea, then you might want to backtrack. If you're good with that, by all means carry on, and thank you so much for reading.

* * *

He'd been working with sharp implements for years – knives, arrowheads – generally if it was sharp and somebody could be stabbed with it or otherwise impaled, he'd probably worked with it at some point. Hell, he shot arrows for a government agency for a living.

But there was a big difference between that and something designed to get under his skin and inject something. Or something originally designed for textiles being used to sew up _human flesh_ because that was _nowhere_ in the same league as making repairs to a holey sock.

In short, Clint was not a fan of needles. Not a fan really meaning downright terrified, in actuality.

Heights he could handle. Ask him to sit for hours double-digit stories above the ground and he was golden. He was fine with flying, be it clinging to the back of Tony's suit or in an actual airplane, it was something he was good with. Hell, he didn't even have a fear of drowning or suffocating to death, wasn't' scared of spiders or snakes – though Natasha flipped shit at the sight of something creeping its way through the grass – but he couldn't handle needles. Absolutely, flat-out couldn't handle it.

Which explained why he'd never had stitches.

It was something he'd been fairly able to keep a lid on. There had been scrapes and scratches – even some fairly heavy bleeders – while working exclusively for SHIELD before hooking up with the Avengers. He hadn't come across anything he couldn't fix with some downtime and a large Band-Aid. Even better was nobody noticed.

Clint was going to do his damnedest to make sure it stayed that way as long as possible.

* * *

His ears were ringing after that last explosion, and he made a mental note to yell at Tony that a little more time to evacuate would be appreciated before he was accidentally flattened the next time. He had his bow in one hand, the other shaking concrete dust out of his hair as he made his way back to the team. Clint had a feeling he wasn't doing much except making himself filthier, and he gave up, looping his bow over his shoulder as he came within the last few feet.

"Little more warning next time, Iron Man," he said, voice clipped. Tony, with his helmet off, stared at him.

"Run a little faster, Robin Hood."

Clint rolled his eyes. Coulson and the rest of the SHIELD support hadn't exactly showed up yet and he blew out a tired breath, coughing a little at the end as he cleared dust out of his mouth.

"You know you're bleeding, right?" Steve asked, pointing.

"Huh?" Clint looked down at his right arm, cranking it around to see the side of his bicep properly, startled to find he was, indeed, bleeding. More like oozing. But it was red and it was leaking out of his arm at a fairly steady pace. "Oh." He clamped his other hand over it. "Okay." He turned back to his teammates.

Tony cocked his head to the side. "That's going to need stitches."

Barton barely suppressed the reflexive flinch when he heard the s-word. He peeled his hand back, took a look at the gash – the edges were a little ragged but it wasn't too long or deep – and shrugged. "Nah. No stitches. Medical tape and gauze'll work just fine."

Steve was trying to formulate a response to that when Fury, Coulson, and the rest of their SHIELD support came storming through the area. Once the area was secure, which took less than five minutes, as the Avengers had dealt with what they had been dispatched to deal with in the first place, the paramedics were allowed on site.

"Anyone in need of medical attention, sir?" one such medic asked Steve, running his eyes quickly over Rogers and the others.

"Yeah," Steve said, motioning to Clint. "Hawkeye…." The words died in his mouth and he looked from side to side.

Clint was gone.

Steve was met with several blank stares and shrugged shoulders and figured someone would track Barton down later in the Mansion where he couldn't escape so easily. For the time being he let it go.

* * *

Clint wandered into the kitchen at the unholy hour of seven wearing nothing but some loose cotton sleep shorts over his boxers and a too-large t-shirt that was – quite obviously to some – not his. He scrubbed at his eyes, heading straight for the coffee pot to get it going and wondering when exactly he'd become the early riser of the bunch.

He slid onto a stool at the kitchen island, listening to the gurgle of the coffee pot and pillowing his head on his arms. There was a piece of gauze taped over the cut on his bicep, and the tape pulled a little but he didn't care. He was still in that same position when Tony shuffled in, rubbing at his bedhead hair and making a beeline for the coffee pot. It wasn't quite finished yet, and he glared at before plopping himself unceremoniously on a stool next to Barton.

Clint, after sparing Tony a glance out of the corner of his eye, went back to staring at the black marble in front of him. Until he felt his shirtsleeve creep up.

"That's a good way to get yourself a busted nose and black eye," Clint said softly as Tony gently – and slowly, very, very slowly – peeled back the loosest edge of tape to look at the wound.

Tony swallowed hard. It was an ugly cut. Jagged edges. No longer bleeding but still raw-looking. It really needed stitches. When he informed Barton of that, Clint shrugged.

"It'll heal," Clint said. The background gurgling stopped. He gently but firmly took his arm back from Tony, smoothed the tape down once again, and stood to head for the cupboard with the mugs in it. He got Tony's – a horrid dark green thing with white writing that said _Overscheduled and Under-Caffeinated_ on the side of it – and his own - white emblazoned with a black line outline of a centaur and bow for his zodiac – and poured coffee for the pair of them.

That particular cupboard was a study in personality. Steve's coffee mug was one of those create-your-own-design kind of things that he'd happily taken advantage of it; Natasha's was a dark blue with the words _Touch My Coffee and Die_ written on the side; Thor drank his out of a beer tankard adorned with intricate carvings of a countryside and quaint little house; Banner's mug was the only clear one of the bunch, shaped like a beaker with a handle with a caffeine molecule etched on the side that didn't have the milliliters marked out; Coulson's coffee mug was absent because it was sitting on his bedside table, as he'd been reading reports before going to bed the previous night while waiting for Clint to finish up at the shooting range; and Nick Fury didn't have a cup in the cupboard because they'd be in serious shit if Fury ever decided to move in with them, and Clint didn't want to comprehend that idea even in his own head.

"Thanks," Tony mumbled, rubbing at his face.

"Not a problem." Clint sipped at his coffee and rested his arm on the kitchen island.

"You ever have stitches?" Tony asked, seemingly out of the blue, after a few minutes of rather tense quite between the two of them.

"Nope." He stared at the black depths of his coffee mug like the secrets of the universe – or at least the one to get him out of this particular conversation – was at the bottom. "You?" He glanced over, realized what he'd said, and appropriately winced. Tony lived every day with something much worse than stitches – an arc reactor in his chest that not only fueled the Iron Man armor but also kept him _alive_. "Tony…"

"It's fine," Stark said, waving a hand in Clint's general direction without actually looking at Barton. "It's fine. I had my appendix out when I was sixteen, though, so I had stitches from that."

"Oh." Silence stretched between them again, no nearly as uncomfortable as the last one, and Clint rubbed at his forehead. That was when he noticed Tony was wearing an old t-shirt. Not old in the sense that it was something he'd had for years, but old in the sense that it was a little outdated. And the closer Clint looked at it, the more it seemed a little too large for Tony's shoulders.

Tony, sensing Clint's stare, turned to look at Barton. "I could ask you the exact same thing."

Barton kept his mouth shut, turning his attention back to his coffee when Thor stumbled in a few moments later and clapped the pair of them on the shoulder hard enough to nearly send them to the floor. Once more, Clint was wondering when this had become his usual morning routine.

* * *

Clint's hips twitched against the mattress as Phil's fingers, followed by his tongue, ghosted over the scar running diagonally across his right shoulder blade. Scar tissue was sensitive. The one directly under it – a bullet hole, judging by the ragged edges – was next and Clint arched his back, grinding his forehead into the mattress as the pillows had been swept to the sides and nearly off the bed completely.

"You never got this looked at, did you?" Phil asked, fingers pressed against the small area of raised flesh.

Did it really matter? Really? Clint pushed up on his elbows enough to crane his neck to see over his shoulder. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

Phil shifted position slightly; Clint tried to get his left knee a little higher toward his chest with a grunt.

"Well, yes," Phil said rather contemplatively, "but my bullet holes aren't nearly this big."

Clint got his forearms underneath him and shoved up and back but there wasn't anywhere to go – not anywhere that didn't send white dots skittering across his vision, that was. "Are we going to have this conversation about who's bullet holes are bigger _now_, Philip?"

Coulson shrugged, got a hand under Clint's left knee and tugged so Barton was jacked up a little on one side. "Well, Clinton," and Barton shuddered _hard_ at that, "we wouldn't be having this conversation if somebody hadn't pulled a vanishing act the last time they were in the field." His right hand traced up Clint's trembling forearm to gently trace the still puckered skin on Barton's bicep. Clint's arms went out from underneath him, sending his chest back to the mattress with a muffled, "Fuck!"

Scar tissue was _very_ sensitive.

"It was fine at the time, Phil," Clint said when he finally found his voice again. A good half octave lower than it normally was. "And it's still fine." He pressed up again. "Can we, I don't know, maybe focus on the task at hand, here?"

Coulson grinned, threaded his fingers through Clint's clenched fists and proceeded to get with the program, all while mulling over his boyfriend's responses in the back of his mind. Something, quite clearly, wasn't adding up.

* * *

Tony wasn't a genius for nothing. He could read the writing on the wall as easily as everyone else when it came to it, and there was some definite writing going on with a certain archer. Stark was on his way back to his borrowed room on the helicarrier, box of juice in his hand and munching on an oatmeal cookie – standard procedure after giving blood – when Clint came around the corner. They passed, exchanged nods, and Tony didn't think about it.

Until Clint nearly mowed him over hauling ass back the direction he'd come. Away from the gym, and away from the blood drive SHIELD had set up to keep their medical stock in good supply.

Tony continued to munch on his cookie, filing the information away to be used at a later date.

* * *

"Flu shot?" Clint asked, fingertips trailing around the edge of the small, round Band-Aid on Phil's bicep.

"Yes," Coulson said, gently removing Barton's wandering hand from his arm and sidestepping around him to get back to the stove. The water wasn't boiling yet but the sauce was starting to simmer, and Phil turned the heat down. "You get one yet?"

Clint's shoulders tightened momentarily. "Nope." He picked up the box of pasta, merely to have something to do with his hands. "Not gonna, either." He looked over at Phil. "I don't get sick."

Phil snorted. "Right, and that's because your last base was where, exactly? Someplace out in the desert?"

Barton blushed. "Well yeah, but people can still get sick out there." He glanced at Phil. "Not that I do. Get sick, that is."

Phil plucked the box of spiral pasta out of Clint's hands. "Uh huh. And when you're down for the count without the ability to breathe through your nose, don't expect me to bring you soup and tissues." A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, and Clint knew he wasn't being totally serious. Coulson would probably ignore his bitching – should he get sick, which he didn't – for about a day, maybe an hour, really, and then he'd bring him some soup and as many tissues and drugs as he needed because Phil was, deep down, secretly the world's best boyfriend as well as being a scary-ass agent when he needed to be.

"'Course not," Clint muttered, his own smile threatening to break through. He bumped his hip companionably into Phil's, his long sleeve tee-covered arm pressed against Phil's dress shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows. The tie had been abandoned long before they'd come into the kitchen.

Clint gave Phil one last nudge and backed up to lean against the kitchen island to better take in the view. This – this whole domestic thing – was a little new for him. Having something stable with someone he could, when he needed to, lean on a little. To have somebody to come home to other than a partially empty room, someone to talk to. The whole package sometimes was a little overwhelming and it was all he could do to stand back, take a deep breath, and let it sink in.

It was comfortable in a way he hadn't experience before and, on some very primal level, it scared it him shitless.

Phil's shoulders twitched the second before he craned his neck to look over his shoulder. "What?"

Barton crossed his arms over his chest. "Nothin'." He looked down at his scuffed shoes and old, beat-up blue jeans. The stuff he wore on his down time. Scratching briefly at the side of his nose, he looked back up at Phil. "I'm good."

Coulson looked him up and down twice, the second time with a definite smirk, and Clint huffed out a laugh.

The opening music from Hawaii 5-O started playing from Clint's pocket seconds before the Imperial Death march came from Coulson. Clint hastily pulled out the offending electronic, took a look at the screen, looked around Phil to the pasta and sauce simmering away on the stove and flinched.

"We'll get it when we come back," Phil said, shutting off both burners while he cradled his phone to his ear with his left hand. Clint goosed him gently in the side on his way by, heading for the nearest staircase down to where the others were assembling already.

* * *

At least they weren't tearing the shit out of midtown Manhattan this time. This time they were down in Brooklyn, further south than Liberty Island and in between checking the warehouses on the wharf, Clint looked over to see the lights of New Jersey flashing off the lapping water. It was damn dark, he wasn't sure they ever knew what they were ultimately looking for, and he'd at some point gotten separated from Steve, Tony, and the others.

His recurve bow – his first love and the one he felt most comfortable with – was strung with an arrow resting where it should next to the sight. He didn't have enough tension on the bowstring to have it all the way back and anchored, but he didn't doubt he couldn't do it in seconds, if necessary. It was almost a reflex movement in some cases.

The warehouse was dark, lit in patches by the lights from outside coming through the windows, and he paused just inside the door to allow his eyes to get accustomed. There was a shuffling sound to his right, and he eased the string back.

Something swung at his head and he ducked, accidentally releasing the string. The arrow pinged off the concrete and Clint swung the bow up, grasping either limb to take the next downward swing aimed for his neck against the riser. Whatever it was – something long, thin, and wooden – connected hard near the grip and had probably tweaked the sight, which meant he'd have to take the time to reset it, and he growled. His bow probably wasn't meant to be used as a baseball bat, but it was the only way he could see to keep whoever was on the other end of the stick from connecting with his head.

As it was, he wasn't expecting the other end of what was actually a rake – a very old and rusty rake – to come at him fairly low. He figured at this point in for a penny, in for a pound.

* * *

Steve looked around at his loosely assembled team while the swarming SHIELD agents took care of the wannabe gangster villains – something Rogers honestly didn't understand – and figured out he was one archer short of a full squad.

"Hawkeye, where are you?"

Silence.

Natasha shifted, looking between a frowning Steve Rogers and an approaching Phil Coulson.

_"Where the fuck are you people?"_

Rogers gave a small sigh of relief when Clint's sharp tone came through his earpiece. "Back where we initially split up. Where are you?"

_"Nearly there – shut up, you asshat."_

Tony, his faceplate up, raised his eyebrows.

"Not you, Cap," Clint said quickly.

Steve barely resisted the urge to smack his palm off his forehead in frustration until he actually _saw_ Clint. The archer had his bow and what looked like a rake in his left hand while his right was fisted in the collar of some poor soul's shirt literally dragging him along. Both of them sported bruises, and Clint's uniform was dark and tacky-looking on his right side, which made sense because there was blood on the rusted metal end of the rake. They weaved their way to the rest of the Avengers; the kid took one look at Bruce – who was still Hulked out – and passed out cold. Clint let him slide to the pavement, dropping the rake from his hand and calmly beginning to unstring his bow like this whole scenario was an everyday occurrence.

"Uh…" Whatever smartass comment had been in Stark's mouth to come out was quelled by a murderous look from Barton, who stared Tony down until he compulsively checked his right gauntlet. Clint pocketed his bowstring and folded down the bow.

Steve was the first to point out the obvious. "You got stabbed with a rusty rake."

"Yup." Clint nodded a hello to a newly arrived Coulson, who was resting his elbow on his holstered firearm. "And?"

"Tetanus," Tony said helpfully, barely resisting the urge to flinch from Barton's dark look. "Medical attention."

"It's fine."

There were several snorts of disbelief and one vocal "You're _kidding_" from Steve.

"You need to get that looked at," Phil said, gesturing to his own side.

Clint looked down, poking a finger tentatively around the ragged edges of his uniform and the smarting wound – damn kid had taken a decent chunk out of him – and shrugged. "I'm good."

"You need, at the very least, a tetanus shot," Steve said, slightly confused to why Clint paled at the last word.

"This isn't an option," Coulson said in a tone generally reserved for when Barton and Stark got up to some pretty serious fuckery off the clock.

"Come on, Barton, just do what your – "

"No." Clint cut Tony off before he could say anything more. "Don't even say it."

"What?"

"You know what. Just don't."

"What?" Tony tried for innocence and failed miserably.

Clint looked at him full-on with narrowed eyes. "I go down, you're going down with me."

Tony paled. "You wouldn't."

"Try me." Barton stared for a few seconds more and then looked between Coulson and Steve. "Really?"

"Get your ass over to that ambulance, Agent."

Clint started shuffling toward the waiting ambulance with more than a few looks back, mind flailing as it tried to figure out a way to get out of this one. Maybe he could not just end up at the ambulance itself, though that wasn't going to work because Coulson was trailing after him, probably to make sure he didn't bolt like he desperately wanted to. He handed his bow and quiver off to Coulson because, in his rather limited experience, medical personal were a little leery of weaponry, and he dutifully climbed in the back of the ambulance and took a seat on the gurney, hands in his lap and practically vibrating from tension.

Coulson leaned against the open door with his arms over his chest, shifting slightly to allow the paramedic to crawl in the back with Clint.

"Agent Barton, I'm Lisa," she said in a chipper, almost overly-friendly way that set Clint's teeth on edge and made his palms go sweaty. He wiped them on his pants and his eyes darted from Lisa's smile to the open doors, Phil casually lounging against the back of the rig. "We'll start nice and easy with some vitals, alright?"

He was tolerant of the blood pressure cuff and even helpful when she had to get him out of the top half of his armor in order to shove a cold stethoscope between his shoulder blades and then around to his chest. He was good when she tentatively peeled back the shredded edges of the neoprene undershirt to actually get the wound itself, which started bleeding sluggishly when its bandage was removed, and he was positively golden in staring at the scratchy blanket beneath him until he heard her mention "stitches" and "shot."

"What?" he croaked.

Lisa put a steady hand on his trembling arm and leaned down to look at the literal chunk of flesh missing. "This is too wide and a little too deep to just fix with bandages. So we're going to take you to the hospital, get you stitched up, and give you a tetanus shot to kill anything that might have gotten in there. My understanding is that it was a rusty rake?" She looked beyond Clint to Phil, knowing she wasn't going to get anything remotely truthful from the patient, and motioned Phil up into the ambulance.

Clint was told to swing his legs up and lie back; Lisa leaned forward to tell the driver they were ready as Coulson snapped the doors shut and Barton began taking very measured breaths. Mostly so he didn't throw up.

That's when he saw it. Out of the corner of his eye. Panic crawled up his throat and he went with his first instinct, which was to get as far away from that damn _thing_ as possible. He jackknifed off the bed with an unmanly yelp he would later deny, nearly took out Coulson in the process, and proceeded to wad himself in the corner of the ambulance, taking the opportunity to snag Phil's gun out of his holster on his way by the startled agent. He didn't aim it – he didn't need to – just having it would be enough of a deterrent to get them to pull this damn wobbly thing over and let him out.

Lisa froze on the other side of the gurney and Phil held his hands out in a non-threatening gesture. Clint's eyes were cracked so wide and fearful the whites were visible all around the dilated pupil and iris. Coulson had to admit this wasn't something he saw on a regular basis, a terrified Clint Barton staring down a paramedic holding a needle –

It clicked. In that instant it clicked. Why all Clint's scars were so prominent, his bullet holes jagged, and the way he'd worn the gauze and tape on his arm rather than getting stitches. The way he was adamant he wasn't getting a flu shot.

Clint Barton was terrified of needles. Absolutely terrified of them.

Moving slowly, Phil plopped himself on the gurney directly between Clint and the paramedic who was still frozen on the other side of the ambulance. He made the motion toward the front for the driver to keep going, and then turned his attention to Clint.

"Can I have my gun back?" Phil asked softly.

"You took my bow. I had to improvise." Clint shifted in his corner, wincing.

Coulson nodded. "Alright."

Barton wasn't a moron. He knew if Phil really wanted his gun back it would be over in a matter of seconds, and he'd probably be on the floor in some sort of very painful hold with a knee pressed to the middle of his back and his cheek smooshed against the plating. But he also knew Phil wasn't going to do that because there was that tiny risk the gun would accidentally go off, and they were in a confined space with tanked oxygen. Not that Clint was actually _going_ to shoot, it was more so the paramedic – Lisa – wouldn't come any closer. He didn't want to hurt her.

"You don't like needles, do you, Clint?" Coulson asked, voice still soft. Like he was dealing with a cornered, skittish animal and while Clint might normally resent the comparison, he was rather alright with it because it was frighteningly true at the moment.

Clint couldn't find his words so he shook his head, instead.

And that simple confirmation had everything else making sense.

"I know you're not going to shoot anybody, Clint, so can I have my gun back, please?"

Barton never took his eyes off Phil's while extending his hand, fingers wrapped around the muzzle to present it to Phil grip-first. Phil took it, idly noting the safety was still on. He slipped it back in his holster and rested his elbows on his knees, calmly regarding his slightly less-panicked boyfriend. Because this wasn't an agent dealing with an agent, this was between Clint and Phil now. Had been ever since they'd climbed in the back of the ambulance.

"Lisa wants to start an IV – it's standard procedure – and it just involves a little poke in your arm and then they give you fluids and it's no big deal," Phil said. "I've had it done multiple times." He scooted down the gurney a little, patting the space he used to occupy while motion for Lisa to come around the other side of him, so she wouldn't be behind Clint if he took Phil up on his offer. In that sense there would be nothing more dangerous than sneaking up on the archer with something he was terrified of.

Clint stayed wadded up in the corner for a few more seconds before carefully uncurling and sort of shuffling toward the gurney to sit with his left side pressed against Phil's right from shoulder to knee. He shivered at the sudden onslaught of warmth – Phil was like a walking furnace – and warily watched Lisa approach with what she needed to start an IV.

"Because they're going to be looking at your right side at the hospital, I'm going to use your left arm, okay?" Lisa, too, kept her voice soft. It wasn't the first time she'd had a patient who wasn't fond of needles, though this one was infinitely more dangerous than even the most tweaked-out druggie. That much she automatically _knew_.

Phil reached around Clint's back to touch his elbow, sliding his fingers down as he tugged to move Clint's arm back, wrapping his hand around Barton's wrist as it rested in the small of his own back. Phil performing the double duty of anchoring him while making sure he couldn't use it to punch Lisa as a reflex. He propped his chin on Clint's shoulder, his other hand occupied with keeping Clint's other wrist down on his thigh. Barton turned his head, wide eyes searching Phil's face for a sign that it was alright. That everything was going to be fine. A Phil, in response, radiated calm in his very Coulson way.

Clint chuckled as Phil's face went through his myriad of expressions normally reserved for dealing with wayward Avengers. There was the _I am not amused face_ followed by _Yes, Director Fury, this is indeed like herding cats_ and then the famous _How the fuck do you people destroy so much shit?_ He jumped a little at the feel of the alcohol swab on his inner arm, eyes wandering briefly toward Lisa; he tugged his right hand as the needle appeared and Phil used one finger to poke him hard in the back. Barton's eyes snapped back to Phil's, who was deftly doing some gymnastics with his eyebrows. There was a light pinch and Phil had released him to shrug out his suit jacket while he sat there, draping it over Clint's inner elbow as soon as Lisa attached the tubing to the bag and set the flow.

He was pliable in the aftermath of the fight or flight adrenaline dump, and went backwards so Phil could swing his feet up on the gurney so he was lying on it. The bag was hanging from a hook on one of the overhead storage lockers, but he couldn't see where it was actually attached to his arm, so it didn't really bother him. He blinked, feeling it harder and harder to keep his eyes open after each down swing and rolled his head to look accusingly at Phil.

"You'll wake up when it's over," Phil said, and because Clint trusted him, he let his eyes close and drifted into the black.

* * *

They were predictably separated in the emergency room, the gurney taking Clint's sedated form into a curtained off treatment area and Phil shuffled toward the waiting room with a clipboard shoved in his hands and instructions to fill out the required information, please. So he plopped himself down with the clipboard, rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie, and picked up the pen to start filling in the little blanks.

He'd been Clint's emergency contact and next of kin of since Barton joined the agency. When they'd gotten together a little over a year ago, Phil had changed his to Clint. But nowhere on any form was it known that Clint had trypanophobia – intense fear of needles – and Phil was thinking it might need to be somewhere in case he wasn't available to talk Clint off the ledge like he'd had to earlier.

And yes, he did feel a smidgen bad about the fact that he and the paramedic had knocked Clint out so the doctors could actually do their job without the risk of becoming patients themselves at the hands of a panicked archer.

Phil handed the clipboard to the attendant at the desk and then settled back in the same hard plastic chair that appeared in hospitals everywhere to wait. He didn't have to wait long before all hell broke loose.

A flustered nurse came tearing through the swinging doors with Phil's suit jacket in her hand, paused long enough to find the man it belonged to, and then made her way straight for the agent. "Sir, we've done the stitches to his side but we're having some issues giving him the shot. Do you think you could come back?"

Phil took his jacket and followed the nurse through the slight maze to the curtained treatment areas of the ER and was a little perturbed by what he saw. Clint was backed into a corner, eyes wide and slightly glazed from a combination of the remnants of the sedative from the ambulance and fear, the gurney on its side and serving as a barrier between him and the medical personnel. Blood dotted the floor, though somehow – rather miraculously, really – the IV was still in the crook of Clint's arm and the bag was still attached to the rod attached to the gurney. Phil tried to get a good look at Barton's side, noted he didn't seem to have pulled any of his stitches and then got a good look at the size of the needle the doctor was wielding. That's when he also noted Clint wasn't wearing pants.

Tetanus shots tended to go in the rear, not the arm.

Phil stepped between the doctors and Clint, made it all the way to the gurney before having to dodge something thrown at him – a box of medical-grade gloves – and crouched so he was on the same level as the archer.

"It wasn't over, Phil," Clint croaked, right arm suckered protectively against his side to hold back the ache. He probably hadn't had any painkillers yet because, up until a certain point, he hadn't been conscious.

"I know," Phil said. "I'm sorry." It wasn't his fault the doctors hadn't managed to stitch him up and shoot him up before he woke up, but he was sorry he'd, in one sense, lied to his boyfriend because he was sure Clint wouldn't be conscious until everything was said and done and Phil could take him home. "There's only one more thing to do and then we can go home. How's that sound?"

Clint's mouth opened but no words came out. He looked beyond Phil at the doctor – at the needle – and paled considerably. He shook his head, tucking further into the corner and Phil's heart broke a little to see a normally fearless man shaking and pale. This was a man who, on one truly memorable disaster of a mission, had gotten up and close and personal with the Hulk and talked him all the way from a raging psychopath down to Bruce again.

And if that didn't impress, there was also the fact Clint was Natasha's best friend and Coulson's boyfriend.

_Let's try a new tactic_. "I'm not going anywhere, Clint," Phil said, holding out his hand, "but I do want to go home. And to do that they need to give you one last little shot – no more of a poke than the IV you let Lisa put in during the ambulance ride. That's it. That's all we have left and then we can find you some pants, you can put my suit jacket on, and we'll go home." He smiled. "We'll even make some of that macaroni and cheese outta the box that you really like because I'm pretty sure the other pasta we were making before we left is now in one giant lump at the bottom of the pan. Then we'll curl up with a movie?" Phil honestly didn't care how it was sounding to the staff standing around him, waiting with baited breath to see what their patient was going to do. "You can pick the movie, if you want to."

That got a snort from Barton and a ghost of a smile. "Last movie was shit," he muttered just loud enough for Phil to hear, and Phil grinned.

"You pick this time." Coulson shuffled a little closer, still crouched. "But you have to get that shot first."

Clint rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead and nodded. He placed one sweaty hand in Coulson's and used the other on the edge of the overturned gurney to slowly get himself upright. Phil helped considerably, giving Clint something steady to lean on when it seemed like he was going to crash back to the floor. He was only in his black briefs, and he curled automatically toward Phil's chest when they were both standing.

Phil wrapped both arms around the slightly smaller man, pinning Clint's own arms to his torso and relaxing slightly when he felt Clint's breath on his neck. He gave the go ahead to the doctor who snapped on a fresh pair of gloves. Coulson kept up a steady stream of nonsense for only Clint to hear – glad to hear a few chuckles – and before Barton could protest – or hit somebody – the doctor was tugging up the band of his briefs and taking Clint's pants from a nearby nurse.

"Thank you," Phil said, arms still full of trembling archer. "I'll take it from here."

Nobody needed to be told twice.

Clint was unnaturally quiet as Phil helped him get his uniform pants on again, didn't protest or ask how Phil knew how to take the needle out of his arm from the IV – though he did go white as the walls and very weak-legged – and let Phil put him in Coulson's suit jacket, though it was almost uncomfortably tight in the shoulders because Clint's had more muscle in places.

"Phil?" Clint's voice was small, and he was gripping Phil's shirt at the sides like his life depended on it.

"Yes?"

"Can we go home?"

"Now we can go home."

Clint huffed against Phil's neck and closed his eyes.

* * *

Clint staggered into the kitchen a few days after winding up on the wrong end of a meet and greet with a rusty rake and the subsequent panic that had been his hospital visit. He got the coffee pot going, got his own mug down and, on impulse, brought Tony's out, too. Sure enough, Stark careened into the kitchen with a muffled curse and rubbing the sleep from his eyes not even five minutes later, seemingly having been lured there by the scent of caffeine. Clint, leaning his elbows on the counter trying to crack his back without tearing his stitches. He honestly tried not to think too much about them because it usually set his pulse skyrocketing when he figured someone must have literally been sewing him up. Didn't matter that he hadn't been conscious for that part, just the thought of it was enough to send residual shivers down in his spine.

So he tugged the cuffs of his long-sleeved black tee over his knuckles, waited for his coffee, and tried not to think about it.

Tony, for his credit, wasn't a genius for nothing. He took his coffee mug from Clint with a grunt, inhaled the steam wafting from the liquid caffeine, and plunked himself down on what he'd come to regard as his stool since he and Clint had inadvertently started their own morning routine. It should have freaked them out. Surprisingly, it didn't.

Clint settled himself on his own stool. He wasn't on active status yet – wasn't going to be for at least until the stitches came out – and he wasn't allowed anywhere near the shooting range until that happened. And it wouldn't be long before he was sufficiently bored out of his skull.

"Barton?"

He looked sideways at Tony. "Stark."

"I think you're afraid of needles."

Clint snorted. "If you're going to rag on me about that…"

"Shut up." Tony took a drink of his coffee, wincing as it burned its way down his throat. "It's a normal fear."

Barton opened his mouth, shut it, and then really _thought_ about Tony was saying. A normal fear. He turned on his stool to look at Tony fully, eyes wandering down to his chest where his arc reactor was. A normal fear.

Then he got it.

Tony wasn't going to rag on him about this because Tony was, in the proper context, scared of batteries. If Clint wanted to get really specific, Tony was probably more scared of car batteries outside of a car than he was of anything else.

Stark shifted under such scrutiny, fidgeting with his mug.

"Tony?" Wide, almost fearful brown eyes met green. "Got it."

Tony relaxed.

Yup. Somehow this had all become normal. Clint could deal with that.


End file.
